by K. L. Savage
My foot hits a rock, and I crash face-first into the ground. Rocks cut along my cheek, but I don’t stay down long. I inhale a few pebbles, chew on a few grains of sand, but don’t bother spitting them out. There isn’t time for me to think to spit. I stumble as I try to get up, the palms of my hands burn from the rubbing of the rocks.
My lungs are balloons, inflating and deflating with every inhale and exhale as I run. Tears fly down my face, and I pump my arms so I can run faster. My knee throbs, but I can’t give in to the pain. There isn’t anyone here.
It’s me.
And him.
The oddest thing I’m noticing right now is the sky. I’m scared out of my mind, sweat is a blanket over my skin, and I’m running for my life, but the night sky is gorgeous right now. Blue and black hues are so deep and crisp, I feel like I could jump and touch the stars with how bright they are twinkling.
I guess if I’m going to die, out of all the nights, I’d rather lose my life under a beautiful sky instead of a rainy one.
I’m tackled from behind, and I hit the ground again. This time, my teeth pierce my lip and there is a high-pitched ringing in my ears. Someone grips my shoulders and flips me over. I struggle to open my eyes, but I manage, tasting blood from the cut across my lip. My hands lifted into the air and zip tied.
All I see is the baby mask. It’s a clouded pale flesh color. I can see hues of his face, but not enough to make an I.D. It’s something someone wears on Halloween.
“Do you know how long I’ve been watching you?” the man’s voice is garbled, but not naturally, either from smoking cigarettes or damage to his throat. All I know, is it’s a sound I’ll never forget for the rest of my life.
I’ll hear him when I close my eyes. It’s the kind of voice that’s rememberable. If I’m surrounded by a crowd and he speaks one word, I’ll hear him, and I’ll know.
My arms are bound, but the rest of my body isn’t. I kick, trying to push him off me, fling my elbows, but he straddles my lap and holds me down in the middle of the dirt road. In between my whimpers, I hear the rubbing of wings of crickets singing.
Fear is a paralytic controlling my body, but somehow the world finds a way to go one.
It’s impressive, shocking, and more terrifying when you realize you’re about to die, but all you can hear is the life around you. I can feel the breeze against my skin, the dry air, but the promise of cold nights approaching. A bird caws in the distance, a rattle of a snake shivers, and those damn crickets are getting louder.
“I told you not to go near him. I told you. I warned you what he did and yet you were with him anyway. What did I have to do, kitty? To save you from him.”
“Why? So you can have me to yourself?” I sneer, gathering the blood in my mouth to launch it at his face.
“No. No, I don’t want you. I’m trying to do you a favor. I’m trying to save you from his madness!” he roars so harshly; I can smell the coffee on his breath. “I’m trying to save you from him. Why can’t you see that? He isn’t good for you. None of them are. You are…you are…” he says the words again, this time, like he is fascinated with me. He hovers his hand over my jaw, then slides his hand down to the bruise across the middle of my throat. “He did this. He hurt you. I knew he would. I’ve been watching them and then Tongue got away from me. He got away!”
I turn my head away when he rubs his nose in my hair, then across my jaw. My chin wobbles as I do my best not to cry, but it’s impossible.
“I told you, I sent you the roses. I gave you clues about what would happen if you didn’t stay away and look at you. They aren’t good people. Especially, Tongue. I’ve watched him—oh, yes—I’ve watched him. I buried him, and I hate that he lived! Everyone loves him, but they don’t see him as I see him. Sick recognizes sick, and he is a sick fuck, isn’t he?” the man says softly against my cheek. “Look what he did to you. I wouldn’t do this to a woman if I had one. Too pretty.”
I keep my mouth shut. I’m not about to tell him I like every single thing Tongue does to me because what he and I have is love. It’s intense. We give each other everything we need. Maybe he is a sick fuck, but you know what?
I am too.
“I did a little research on you too, you know,” he chuckles, then taps the side of my temple. He brings his lips down to my ear and the warm air against my cheek reminds me of the heat kicking on in the middle of summer, suffocating me for a second. “You. Have. Psychosis.” He taps three times against the side of my head. He lowers his voice, “Do you think I’m real? What if I’m not? What if this is all a delusion in that twisted head of yours? It’s okay,” he shushes me as I cry, petting the side of my head. “I’ll take care of you. I’m going to help you. Okay? I’m going to help you.”
“I don’t need your help. I’m fine. I’m healthy.” Unlike you. I want to say, but again, I swallow my tongue and stare at the road fading into the night.
“Mmm, is that why you’re on medication? Because you’re fine?” he rolls off me and zip ties my ankles together next. “We don’t need medication. Nothing is wrong with us. You need to accept who you are. You don’t have an illness. You have a gift.”
It doesn’t feel like a gift when I’m driving, and I hallucinate I’m about to drive off a cliff or my dead mother is talking to me from across the dinner table. There have been worse breaks in reality, sometimes suicidal thoughts, sometimes my mom would ask me to join her.
Sometimes, I’d want to.
Until I got on the medication.
“It’s why I’ve switched your pills out with a placebo.”
“No,” I shake my head in denial. That can’t be possible. I would have had symptoms. I think. Maybe.
“You’ll see. You’re going to feel so much better instead of living in a fog, unable to be yourself because society thinks you’re broken!” he yells, sliding his arms under my body and slings me over his shoulder. He trudges out from the side of the road and, steps up on higher ground, and begins to walk into the trees.
Vegas is mostly desert, but there are some areas that are wooded and rocky. I bet I’m about to get thrown off that cliff I used to see when I had breaks in my reality. At least it will be a quick death.
“We are going to be great friends. I found a place. It’s close to the Ruthless Kings, you know. I like to keep an eye on them. They can’t be trusted. Especially Tongue. I buried him. I told you that, right?”
I lift my head to see where we are going, but I see a ton of land, and it’s hard to decide where I am when I am seeing everything upside down. I open my mouth and start to scream at the top of my lungs, “Help me! Someone help me! Help me!”
He flings me to the ground, the thin skin around my elbow pierced by a cactus. “Why did you have to go and do that? I thought we were friends. I’ve been doing you so many favors.” He sighs, clearly not happy with me. He rips a section of his shirt off, squats, and carefully wraps the material around my head after stuffing it in my mouth, then ties it, tight.
“That ought to do it,” he says proudly, patting my cheek. “Now, what was I saying?” he lifts me up and over his shoulder again. “Right. Tongue, your little boyfriend. I buried him. Six feet under. The chances of him surviving were…slim,” his voice darkens. “He was so stupid, walking around, all scary and badass, yet he couldn’t read the back of a milk carton.”
I mumble around the mouth gag, “He isn’t stupid!” not that it matters. It sounds like nothing, but I can’t sit back and let him talk about Tongue like that. Tongue is smart, he is brilliant, and I can’t wait to teach him the things he has missed out on because he will own the fucking world if given a chance.
I’m going to give it to him.
I lift my arms and slam them against my kidnapper’s back. I’m sick of this nice guy act. He isn’t nice. Nothing about him is fucking nice. I want to go home. I need to know Tongue is okay. I want to live my life waking up to Tongue licking my skin and promising a world filled in his shadows.
“Wi
ll you stop? That hurts. I have feelings.”
I scoff and mumble, “I don’t care.” It doesn’t sound that way, again, I’m sure he can’t understand me, but it’s worth a try. I keep hitting him, hoping I punch a kidney, or I paralyze him somehow, but he keeps walking as if he is in a field of damn wildflowers, casual and happy.
Holy Moly.
This is exhausting.
“We are here.” He slings me over his shoulder again and holds me like a baby. “See, this can be our new home. We can get people like us. We can have our Asylum. It can be a place of safety where we can all be normal.”
I tremble, slowly moving my neck until I’m looking at an old, run-down brick building. The windows are bashed in. There are plywood sheets over the door with a big red X to warn people to stay away. I bet this house is hundreds of years old. It’s beautiful.
Or it was.
Until this creep found it.
“Daphne,” I mumble her name as I wake up slowly, the sound of machines beeping interrupting my dream. Daphne was there. She was beautiful in a long white dress, wearing my ring, and that night, while we were alone in our room, she let me carve my property patch into her skin while we fucked.
It’s a dream that needs to become a reality.
But she isn’t here.
“Daphne?” I croak, then yank out the oxygen tube hissing through my nostrils. “Daphne!” I yell through the cold, dark room. I used to yearn to live in the shadows, to be in the place I call home, but now, there is no appeal without the light at the end of the tunnel.
The light is Daphne.
“Hey, Tongue. Woah, it’s okay. You’re at the clubhouse. You’re safe.” Doc’s voice has my eyelids trying to open but they are sandbags, heavy and full of grit.
“Daphne.”
His face comes to view after he flips on the lamp and even though he has pretty boy looks, his back is carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey. We all have our fucking demons, and some are worse than others. A disappointed and dreadful line appears on either side of his lips. “I’m sorry, we haven’t found her yet.”
The heartrate monitor beeps quicker as my worst nightmare takes hold of my body. I turn my head to the right so Doc can’t see the glassy mirage in my eyes, but then I see Sarah in the bed next to me. She’s awake, staring at me with a kind smile.
“Sarah.” Her name is broken on my tongue. A tear drips onto my cheek and this time, I understand my emotion. I’m thankful she’s okay, and I’m scared out of my mind that Daphne is not. “I’m so glad to see you alive.”
“Ah,” she waves her hand dismissively. “It’s going to take more than a knife wound in the stomach to bring me down.” Sarah chuckles, then lays her hand over her stomach from the pain.
“I thought you were my Uncle,” I admit. “The guys they found…”
“I know,” she cuts me off and reaches her hand across the space between us. With my good arm, I meet her hand with mine and hold onto it. She frowns, and her lip trembles as she begins to cry. “I don’t blame you. I’m so sorry, Tongue. I’m so sorry that happened to you.” She studies my chest, no doubt trying to see the burn scars under the tattoos.
“Stop saying that. You knew before everyone. It isn’t your fault.”
“I’m still sorry,” she says. “And I’m sorry about Daphne. Is she—”
“—She’s mine, Sarah. Mine. She’s everything. I need her. I need to find her.”
“We will find her. Reaper won’t let her be away from you.”
I hope not, but I know punishment is still in my future from Reaper for what I did to Sarah. I’ll never forgive myself. If Reaper decides for Daphne to be away from me, I’d have to leave the club because Daphne is what I need to survive.
Surviving used to be as easy as breathing, but now it isn’t so simple. There’s more to it than that. It’s emotion. The damn thing I used to want to ignore because it can blind you. It isn’t so bad though, fighting while blind because the heart leads you to what you need to do. I’ve been fighting all my life to breathe, but I haven’t been fighting all my life to live.
Daphne has taught me the difference.
“Tongue,” Doc says my name with a heavy burden as he sits down in the chair next to me. “We need to talk about your arm.”
“I don’t care about my arm.” I yank the needle from the top of my hand and then pull the wires off my chest. “I need to find Daphne, and I can’t do that from this damn room. It feels more like a graveyard than a hospital with all the traffic that’s been through here. Sorry, Doc.”
“No, I get it, but you can’t leave.”
“You aren’t going to stop me,” I reply, getting more pissed off by the minute.
“Nope,” Badge stops at the bottom of the steps and twirls handcuffs in the air. “But I can.”
“And I can make sure you can’t feel your entire body.” Doc moves too fast for me to notice and presses something sharp against my neck. “This sedative will knock you out for days, Tongue. Do not test me.”
Badge whistles as he struts over to my side of the bed and instead of cuffing my hands like a normal person, he slings the metal over the left ankle and traps me against the bed. “What? I wanted to make sure he wasn’t going to go anywhere,” he defends himself as Doc and me both stare at him in discontent.
“I didn’t want him to feel trapped,” Doc explains, dropping the needle from my neck.
“Well, he brought it upon himself,” Badge states, leaning against the wall and crossing his arms over his chest. “You know we can’t trust him to stay.”
“I’m not a fucking dog,” I yank against the cuff attached to the bed, a brief, quick reminder that I’m more like a dog now than I ever have been before. I’m fucking chained. I might as well sleep outside in the fucking mud and be useless because that’s how I feel.
“Hey!” Slingshot says with too much cheer. All of us turn our heads to the happy-go-hungry guy, and the smell of tacos has my stomach grumbling. He jumps down the steps and hands a bag to Sarah. “I got your favorite. I know how much you like the little taquitos with that spicy dip. And Tongue, I got you the macho box of carnitas with extra cilantro.” He points a finger at me and shakes it. “Don’t think I didn’t notice how much cilantro you used. Anyway, I got you ten of them. Thought we could share, like we did on Halloween.” He lifts his arm above his head and scratches his shoulder. “I—uh—I’m sorry.”
I sigh, close my eyes, and roll them so no one can see. I have a feeling every single member is going to apologize to me for what they saw in my journals. It is exactly what I wanted to avoid.
“About Daphne,” Slingshot hurries to explain his apology. “I’m sorry about Daphne. I know how much you like her.”
“Love her.”
“What?” he asks, coming around the side of the bed. Badge and Doc share a look. I know that shared glance. They think I’m crazy because not much time has passed since I met her. A guy like me loving a girl like Daphne, isn’t good, is it?
“I love her,” I correct Slingshot, sounding out each word slowly so they understand me. “Shocker, isn’t it? That a monster like me is so capable of feeling something other than the urge to kill.”
Doc opens his mouth to say something, but he is interrupted by the basement door opening again. Slingshot sits the bag of tacos on the nightstand, then plops down in the recliner beside me. He laces his fingers over his stomach as a stampede of boots clobber down the steps. Reaper, Bullseye, Tool, Knives, and Skirt appear. Skirt has a bruise on the side of his face and a blue bruise decorates his throat from when I nearly choked him to death.
“Skirt—” I begin to start my apology, but he holds up his hand. “Don’t worry about it. I know. I’m sorry Maximo set us up like that.”
“Yeah, he’s officially on my shit list.”
“About time,” Moretti says from the bed all the way at the end. Shit, I didn’t even know he was there.
“You don’t even know anything about him,” Reaper rep
lies to Moretti.
“So. I still don’t like him.”
“I don’t have the energy to deal with you right now.” Reaper grips the end of the bed and his cheek jumps as he tightens his jaw. He rubs a hand over his mouth, walks between the beds, and kisses Sarah on the forehead. “Hey, Doll.”
She hums as her eyes close, relishing in his touch. I should have relished in Daphne more.
“How are you feeling?” he asks her, rubbing his fingers over her cheek.
“Like brand new,” she jokes, which only has me feeling worse.
“Good.” I can tell he doesn’t believe her and that’s when he turns his sights on me.
And damn, they are full of damn fury.
“You up for talking, Tongue?” he asks, sitting on the edge of Sarah’s bed.
The crinkling of paper has everyone turning their head to Slingshot. He is digging into the taco bag, and when he feels a dozen eyes on him he pauses and glances up from peering at the tacos. “I’m hungry,” he says.
“No,” Reaper orders.
“Reaper, I haven’t had any today. I’ve been waiting on Tongue so we can share.”
Reaper rubs his temples and takes a deep breath. “I said no. I’m not dealing with your gassy ass today.”
Slingshot scoffs. “I…I…I took my pill.”
“Yeah, we all know that doesn’t matter,” Bullseye mumbles and Tool elbows him in the gut. “What? It isn’t like we aren’t all thinking it.”
“Okay, focus.” Reaper places his palms together in a steeple position, exhaling. “Please, for the love of all things vile, fucking focus. The lot of you. For five goddamn minutes!” he shouts, his composure breaking. He grabs the lamp and throws it, submerging us in darkness. “Damn it! Someone turn on the light,” he barks.
“Got it,” Tool says, then a few seconds later, we hear a thud. “Shit. Stupid goddamn wall.”
“Any day now, Tool.”
“Got it. I got it, Prez.” Tool flips on the light above and the sudden brightness has me turning my head and holding my hand over my eyes.